Chancellor's home gets $10M rehab

It has taken nearly 10 years and more than $10 million to make the University House a place where UC San Diego’s chancellor can live and entertain again.

On Wednesday, workers were oiling and waxing the tile and wood floors and doing last-minute touch-ups in anticipation of Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and his family moving into the 12,000-square-foot home in the next two weeks.

Correction

An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of rent the chancellor was paying.

Khosla, who is married and has three children, has been living in a rental home in La Jolla at a cost of $7,950 per month since he moved to San Diego in August 2012.

The adobe University House sits atop a cliff off La Jolla Farms Road, features Pueblo Revival architecture and boasts a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. It has been renamed as the Audrey Geisel University House to honor longtime UC San Diego supporter Audrey Geisel, who provided funding for the renovation.

The single-story home was designed by noted Santa Fe-based architect William Lumpkins and was built for William Black and his family. The university purchased it in 1967.

There are private areas for the chancellor’s family — including three bedrooms, a family kitchen and family room — and public spaces including a large reception room, a formal dining room and a commercial kitchen. The building also has an indoor “barbecue room” with a working grill. Its three-car garage has an interior wall painted with a colorful mural of horses.

Architect Ione R. Stiegler has been handling the rehabilitation and renovation project for about five years, with most of the construction taking place in the past two years. A bluff behind the home needed to be stabilized before work could be done on the house.

The project came with a number of challenges.

“My ‘elevator stump speech’ is that this is a 12,000-square-foot, unreinforced masonry building on a failing coastal bluff with protected flora and fauna — not only that but with nesting pairs of gnatcatchers, with failing utility systems sitting within a sanctified Native American cemetery, “ Stiegler said.

Work was carefully supervised so the grounds would be disturbed as little as possible. On a couple of occasions, bones and some other artifacts were discovered: once in 2009 when borings were drilled to test the stability of the bluff prior to a retaining wall being built, and a second time in late 2012 or early 2013 when workers were digging for sewage lines.

American-Indian monitors were on site any time digging took place, and archeologists sifted through layers before geologists did their work.

Under federal law that governs how the discovery of American-Indian remains are handled, university officials contacted representatives of the Kumeyaay tribe, who were determined by the state to be the next most likely descendants of the people buried on the property. The tribe took possession of the found materials — a grinding stone and some fragmentary remains.

University House was the first residence built in La Jolla Farms. The university paid $2.7 million for it and 130 surrounding acres of land.

The University of California has a policy requiring chancellors to live in university-designated housing that is on or near campus in order to carry out fundraising and other entertaining duties.

University House was the home of every chancellor until 2004, when then-Chancellor Robert Dynes moved out and recommended that the structure be inspected. The house was deemed uninhabitable because of improper drainage, erosion problems and violations of the state’s earthquake codes.

The next chancellor, Marye Anne Fox, lived in other places for her entire tenure — first in a La Jolla rental that cost the university $6,500 a month and then in a home she purchased in 2010. After Fox bought her house, she received a housing allowance of $20,000 a year to cover the wear and tear on her home, utilities and other university-related entertaining and business expenses.

Plans for how to deal with the structurally unsound University House changed many times.

At first, officials announced plans to raze the historic home and rebuild it at a cost of $7.2 million. Then they said they would sell the home after officials were unable to raise the needed money.

They reversed that decision after university fundraisers working behind the scenes were able to raise the necessary funds. Preservationists were able to get the home listed on local, state and national registers of historic sites and in 2008, the university dropped the demolition plans and began pursuing a renovation and rehabilitation project.

Financial backing came from various sources, including $3 million from Geisel, $1 million from former Padres owner John Moores, $5.05 million from the Rik and Flo Henrikson Endowment Fund and $1.5 million from a UC Office of the President endowment that’s independent of state funds.

HOUSING ALLOWANCES

How other local colleges handle housing arrangements for their top leader:

• San Diego State University: President lives in a university-provided, 5,216-square-foot home that donors bought in 2000.

• California State University San Marcos: Current president owns a house in Vista. She receives $60,000 housing allowance each year.

• University of San Diego: As part of president’s annual compensation package, USD provides housing at Casa de Alcalá, a private residence on the school campus.

• Point Loma Nazarene University: No special housing arrangements.

• National University System: “The university does provide housing for the president to carry out university business,” a spokesman said.

• San Diego, Southwestern and Grossmont-Cuyamaca community college districts: No special housing arrangements.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT UNIVERSITY HOUSE

• The site has primarily been a place of “native habitation” for at least 10,000 years.

• State has designated the property as a Sanctified Native American Cemetery. It’s one of two such spots in the region.

• Home is built from adobe blocks brought to the site from Ramona. The walls are two feet thick. Adobe is known for its insulative properties. An adobe building will naturally be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than a wood-frame structure.

• Home was the first house built in La Jolla Farms. The area was developed by the William Black family.

• All of the home’s intricately carved, wooden doors were hand-built on site by a master carpenter.

• The blackened, aged patina on the log “vigas” beams were an accident. William Black’s son William Black Jr. was helping to build the house during his summer vacation from school. He was cutting steel rebar when he accidentally charred a nearby pile of logs. He tried to hide the mistake by wire brushing off the char marks. When his mistake was discovered, the result looked so good that he was put to work charring and brushing the rest of the logs.

• Ruth Black used cow bells as cabinet pulls so she would hear if anyone was getting into the liquor cabinets.